Amazon founder and CEO Jeff Bezos has agreed to by The Washington Post Co.'s flagship newspaper for $250 million.

The deal ends ends four generations of ownership by the Graham family, currently headed by chief executive Donald Graham.

Amazon itself has no role in the purchase. When the deal is completed, Bezos will be the sole owner of the news organization. The Post Co. has said it will change its name and continue to operate as a publicly traded company.

Although the The Washington Post has seen a 44 percent decline in operating revenue of the past six years and its print circulation fell 7 percent in the first six months of this year, Donald Graham said it would have survived without the deal.

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"Every member of my family started out with the same emotion — shock — in even thinking about. But when the idea of the transaction with Jeff Bezos came up, it altered my feelings," Graham told The Washington Post in an interview today. "The Post could have survived under the company's ownership and been profitable for the foreseeable future. But we wanted to do more than survive. I'm not saying this guarantees success but it gives us a much greater chance of success."

Post Publisher Katherine Weymoth — Graham's niece, who was recently profiled in The New York Times — will remain under Bezos. Executive editor Martin Baron will stay and during a company-wide meeting the Post's 2,000 employees that layoffs were not part of the deal with Bezos.

"I don't want to imply that I have a worked-out plan," Bezos told The Post today. "This will be uncharted terrain and it will require experimentation."

Lots of Post staffers voiced their reactions on Twitter and New York Magazine collected 40 of them in this post.